Virginia you're mine! Pennsylvania you're next!

Hi Everyone,

     As of 5/17/07 we are at Bears Den Hostel ("a little castle in the woods") at mile marker 988.9. Mb and I mowed the grass at the place and we got the hiker special which includes bed, shower, laundry, pizza, and a pint of Ben and Jerry's free of charge. I am pleasantly full as I write this.  Tomorrow is a milestone day.  We will cross the 1000 mile mark, finish Virginia (the longest state on the trail @ 550 miles), and make in Harper's Ferry the psychological halfway point of the trail (the real halfway point is at mile 1087 at Pine Grove Funace State Park in Pennsylvania).  Today we walked the infamous "roller coaster", relentlessly climbing up and down small ridges on rocky trail.  We were getting soft after leaving Shenandoah National Park, where the terrain was a "magic carpet ride" along a semi-flat ridges and we could buy milkshakes and beer along the trail at one of the many waysides.  Overall Shenandoah was a mediocre park.  The views were hazy, we crossed Skyline drive once every two miles, and the forest was ravaged by a recent icestorm.  Shenandoah is geared more for the automobile than the hiker.  That said, we were easily able to walk more than 20 miles a day.  After leaving the Shenadoah we treated ourselves to a desert and a drink in Front Royal, VA.  

        Whoever said "Virginia is flat" or "it's all downhill" was lying.  Before entering Shenandoah we had 5 days worth of 2500+ ft climbs and descents, culminating in Priest/Three Ridges wilderness.  On this day we did a two 800 ft climbs in the morning descended 3000 feet off of the Priest and then went right back up 3000 ft up the craggy Three Ridges Mountain.  It was definately worth the extra effort at the end of the day to walk the 2.5 miles off the trail down the to Rusty's Hardtime Hollow, a legendary AT hostel.  Rusty's is a shrine to the AT.  He takes your picture on his polaroid camera and staples it to the ceiling with all of the the other thru-hikers from the past 20 years.  There are signs all over his property laying down the rules and espousing his views on the AT.  My favorite sign was "Please no water battles in the kitchen because of the lights."  Rusty has a fun spirit.  He challeged us to hit empty soda cans past a target for free ice cream and then dumped out the cans on the driveway and ran them over with his tractor with Creedence blaring in the background.  He droves us back to the trailhead in a souped up pickup truck, and we were smiling for the whole day after. 

We are sad to be missing Trail Days in Damascus, VA.  We are sorry we missed many of our fellow thru-hikers who are hitching a ride south to attend. We decided not to go because we are just getting up to our desired average milage of 14.1 mpd to finish the trail in five months and we did not want to be pressured to hike really hard to make up the four days we would have taken off.  So we plod forward into W. Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania, the land of rocks.  We've walked far but we're not even halfway there yet.  So much more to see.

Onward!

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